


A Comb with Fourteen Spokes

by Chyme



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Grief/Mourning, Southern Water Tribe, bereavement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 17:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12040425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chyme/pseuds/Chyme
Summary: Both Kanna and Katara have lost someone precious to the Fire Nation. But years later, only one of them manages to come back to life.





	A Comb with Fourteen Spokes

 

Each year, as the sun dipped into the sea, smearing long strokes of gold into the purplish hue of the sky, Kanna wrapped herself into furs that had spent years falling apart. They bulged against her waist, strained against her stomach, and were almost torn apart by the weight her age had brought her; but still, her hands grimly fixed the hood around her head as she waddled out onto the path only her brain could remember.

Her son said not a word against this. He used to, back when he was younger and more sympathetic to the sight of her struggling through the snow, flinching as her hands squeezed into gloves that had fit her perfectly forty years before. But now, his face framed by a beard that had only grown thicker since his wife died, he could barely stand to watch her go.

But Katara sometimes joined her, always with an anxious glance over each wobbly step her Grandmother made, perfectly-fitting gloves ready to clench and hold the arms that Kana struggled to pull away from her younger grasp.

Sokka meanwhile, stared out after them from the small dot of gold in their igloo, the curtained entrance blown open by Kana’s determination. But he never moved. Only watched, and if his hand tightened round the spear his father was teaching him how to make, well then. Kanna tried not to notice.

So Katara moved with her instead, in place of her mother, who had never really understood this ritual of Kanna’s, hands too tight round her mother-in-law’s shoulders when she shuddered and bent over the ice, fumbling over the little comb drawing she had painstakingly spent months scratching into the remnant of an animal bone. The years had robbed the woman of her fine eyesight and steady hands, but still Kanna fancied that the lines she had etched out there bore the same fourteen spokes she once remembered dragging through her friend’s hair.

And now she was here, without Kya.  She sighed and let go, watching this year’s bone sink out of sight into the deep darkness of the sea.

‘For my friend,’ she told Katara afterwards, ‘for someone the Fire Nation took away.’

Katara bit her lip and said she was sorry.

But unlike Kya, whose eyes had always had a gentle pity to them as she said the same words, she _actually_ was. And as she grew stronger, more able to handle the cooking utensils that Kya’s hands had always fit so firmly round, Kana saw her make similar voyages out towards the sea, out on a different day; a grim anniversary. The day when snow and soot had merged, weeping out over the forms of their family as they rolled and wrapped Kya’s flame-blistered form into furs that would hide her still smoking corpse.

But Katara never dropped anything into the water when she made these voyages, Kanna noticed. Only words.

Still, Kanna knew the feeling behind them would never be enough to bridge the gap between Katara’s mouth and her mother’s lost ears.

 

\--------------------------

 

The year she was left behind, all her family members journeying into the heart of the Fire Nation, with the long flare of a comet overhead being the only thing to announce their eventual return, Kanna ended up stumbled out by herself, no one’s hands to help her, and nearly drowned. Not anywhere near the water, but trapped in the air, flecked by a fine whirl of snow that wedged flakes into her mouth and nose and wrapped, cold, melting rivers of moisture over the frail film of her eyes. It was almost impossible to see, to move, without Katara’s waiting hands to guide her.  

But the air had forgotten that Kanna had braved the distance of an entire world once, had clung to driftwood and the scraped form of a boat nobody would miss, in order to escape Pakku. She had battled storms and starvation, had hidden from skirmishes between Earth Kingdom soldiers and the ones that spurted fire from their fists, and ended up here, in a broken tribe, that promised freedom and heart-ache in equal measure.

So Kanna flailed and strode forward, only the barely-there blackness of the water being enough of a barrier to stop her _._ She ended up wobbling there, on the edge of the world, peering down to check that the dark cut of the ocean was still visible under the rain of white around her before  dropping her precious bone inside it. It darted out of her sight, much like a fish, lost to the sea and not, she hoped, she prayed, to the drowning white of the snow.

 

\--------------------------

 

Her family returned to her, changed and happier. Hadaka had a new woman in his life and Sokka could now freely use the weapons he had always attempted to craft. Katara meanwhile, dragged icicles out of water and snow, letting them roll out into forms that only Pakku could match.

Pakku. Whom Kanna had, against her better judgement, married. But he was different now, she told herself. She could see it. It was in the way he spoke  of Katara, the wrinkles dropping from his face as the mouth beneath proclaimed that she was the best student he had ever had. Katara. His student. _A girl._

No, thought Kanna, looking over to her granddaughter, who now used waterbending to stir the stew nestled within her mother’s old cooking pot, rather than the spoons the dead woman had left behind. No, not a girl, not anymore. A woman.

  Still, it was how Pakku looked at her, respected her as his legacy, that had softened Kanna’s heart towards him. Anyone who loved her granddaughter, who had helped ease the burn of helplessness Katara  had felt, year after year, as she shook her hands at the snow and barely managed to make it clump together, was worthy of Kanna’s consideration.

 

\--------------------------

 

‘I’ve never asked,’ Katara said quietly, as she watched a familiar sight, the bone dropping with a ‘plop’ into the dark grip of the ocean. ‘All these years, I’ve been too scared too; you always looked so sad while you were doing this, that I didn’t want to cause you any more pain.’

Katara met Kanna’s gaze head-on and refused to bite her lip.

‘But I know now that sometimes pain needs to be confronted. It’s just...I know the name of my mother’s dead friend, but not yours. Who was she?’

Kanna closed her eyes briefly, fought down the spurt of pain that resulted from Katara’s question.

‘Hama.’

The name escaped her weary voice for the first time in sixty years and Kanna ended up opening her eyes in time to see Katara’s widen in horror.

 

\--------------------------

 

‘I want to see her.’

Kanna was firm; seated inside their home, with the walls of ice caving them in, and yet despite the licks of flame beneath her hands, she had never felt colder. Except, perhaps, the day they had slammed the iron curve of that terrible ship’s ramp down into the walls of her world, and escorted Hama out of it, across it, into an unknown one.

Sokka frowned. ‘Look, no offense Gran Gran, but Hama, she’s crazy. And not the good, lovable King Bumi kind, but the murderous, I-want-to-see-everybody-dead kind.’ His hands rose up and made a variety of stabbing motion with his boomerang to help emphasise Hama’s violence. ‘She’s so wrapped up in the idea that she has to make a bunch of innocent civilians pay for what a bunch of _soldiers_ did to her, that I doubt a nice chit-chat with an old friend is going to magically change her as a person.’

Kanna didn’t blink, but stiffened slightly, resting her hands on her knees. ‘I’ve never met King Bumi,’ she stated calmly, ignoring Pakku’s slight fidget, ‘but I have met Hama. And now I want to meet her again. Regardless of who she might be now.’

Katara, who had been leaning over the fire, eyes buried in the flames, straightened slightly. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ she said lowly. ‘Sokka’s right. Hama won’t be who you remember.’

Unspoken, lay the thought: it will only cause you more pain.

Kanna straightened her considerably bent spine. Or at least tried to, at any rate.

‘I’ve sailed across the world before,’ she reminded them all tartly. ‘And I’m sure the Fire Nation is a lot closer than the North Pole is.’ She bent and felt the familiar juddering pain of her spine unhooking itself from its stooped-over curve as she moved. Shaking, she clambered to her feet. ‘But I need to go now; before I’m too old to make the trip.’

For a moment, she was the tallest person in the room, everyone else seated beneath like kneeling subjects. But then Katara moved, shaking off the haunted look in her eyes from the flames that still held them. They darted up towards her grandmother’s and burned, fierce, like a jewel, so different from the quiet hum of grey Kanna remembered in Hama’s.

‘You didn’t stop Sokka and I from following Aang,’ she said quietly. ‘So I won’t stop you. But, unlike us, I don’t think you’ll like what you find.’

 

\--------------------------

 

A few weeks later, Kanna was left staring through a set of bars in a dark, underground place. And there was no smell of the earth to soften the sterile metal around them, and no window for either the sun or the moon to slot through and carve light into Hama’s features. No, there was only the guttering flicker of the candle flame, wax dripping steadily into the tin rim of the plate that cradled it against the ground. It was the closest, Kanna realised, that Hama would ever get to hearing rain fall again within her lifetime. A subtle cruelty.

There was a rattle as Hama stirred, the chains wrapped round her wrists and ankles letting out a noisy clatter like a disturbed swarm of insects. And at that noise, another feeling came rushing up, fierce and heavy, within Kanna’s heart. Grief. Overwhelming, heavy grief.

She almost fell over in her rush to grab the bars, to press her face against their sliding coldness.

‘Hama, it’s me, Kanna. You might not recognise me, with how old, I’ve gotten, with how old both of us, have gotten.’ She forced herself to stop, to bark out a bitter laugh. ‘All these years I’ve thought you were dead. But you weren’t were you? You survived.’

Hama’s eyes flicked up and Kana felt a pang at how familiar the grey inside them was. A little paler perhaps, than they had been when Hama could freely wear her comb within her hair, but still, still that aching shade of winter sky, clouds dusting the hue overhead. Everything else was withered, distorted by wrinkles and that same hair that could now blend in against snow.

Not, Kanna was dimly aware, that she was in much better shape.

‘Kanna?’ Hama peered closer, something other than dull apathy in her gaze. Then she leant back, gaze stiff and disinterested. ‘Are you sure, my dear? The Kanna I remember would never walk around without that necklace she liked to show off.’

A shift of blue from the corridor outside and Katara took a tiny step forward, neck arched proudly under the heavy cold stone Pakku had picked out decades before. And Hama’s eyes swung round instantly like a snake, to rest on her face.

‘My only student...I didn’t think you had it within you to come and gloat. How have you been, my dear? No strange impulses when the full moon comes out? No? I’m sure you’ve felt its call. Locked away as I am down here, even I can still feel it.’

Katara’s face hardened and her fingers came up, to tap pointedly at the ribbon of blue wrapped around her throat.

Hama blinked. Then cast her gaze between it and Katara’s stare, before appraising the old woman before her anew.

‘Ah...now I see it. The same round faces...’

Kanna was taken aback to see a cruel leer take over Hama’s face. She looked rather how she imagined the widow of snow had looked like, the old ghost they warned never to trust when the harshest winters came calling.

‘Now I see the resemblance. How funny. You lived your life and got _busy_ , Kanna. Who was the lucky man? Better than the one who gave you that necklace, I hope.’

‘Well,’ Kanna murmured. ‘He never tried to force me under his shadow, at least.’

Hama cackled. ‘Yes. We both did well, didn’t we? We both fought back against those who tried to crush us.’

Kanna wisely decided not to share the fact that she had ended up marrying Pakku anyway.

‘It’s a shame you never came home,’ she said instead, her tongue thick within her mouth. ‘You could have done so much for us. You could have taught my granddaughter properly. She would have learnt Southern style waterbending before the Northern kind.’

Hama frowned. ‘Is that a reprimand? The years I spend here enabled me to hone my craft, to develop the most powerful form of waterbending there is. Anything less would have been a betrayal to the rest of our people who failed to escape. Besides; it’s not as though Katara didn’t end up benefiting from my tutelage, right, Katara?’

She gave her granddaughter a sly look. ‘Did nothing I teach you ever benefit you? Did you never once use bloodbending on someone who deserved it? You can’t tell me, in winning this war of ours, that you never once stumbled across a soldier who didn’t merit the use of this technique.’

Katara’s fists are balled against her side and she breathed, in and out, a push of carbon dioxide and a pull of oxygen. She quivered, like a wave ready to roll up into a tidal storm.

Hama closed her eyes and settled back into the wall. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘No!’ spits out Katara. ‘Only once and it was a mistake! I used it on the wrong person. And when I found the right one, I let him live; because he was like you, cold and empty, with nothing worthwhile to protect. The war’s over Hama, you’re just fighting ghosts.’

She turned on her heel and stomped away; but to Kanna the action resembled fleeing, more so than a firm and decisive march.

Hama must have felt the same because she was smiling.

‘It’s enough that you used it,’ she murmured. ‘Enough that you didn’t forget.’

‘I didn’t forget either,’ Kanna spoke feverishly. ‘Every year I stopped to remember you.’ She fumbled with her sleeves, dragging out the pale, slender curve of a comb. It was a lighter blue that the one that had adorned Hama’s hair and the spokes were thicker, thirteen of them instead of fourteen. ‘I don’t know where your old comb is. But Katara is right; the war is over. They’ve got no right to prevent you wearing our tribe’s colours once again.’

Hama stared at the small puddle of blue the comb formed as Kanna tossed it between the bars with a trembling hand. It slid out under Hama’s fingers, a little like spilled water.

‘I hate what you’ve done to my granddaughter; you had no right to force that on her. Not even for our Tribe.’ She paused. ‘But I’m glad too. Because one day, if she’s ever backed into a corner and there is a full moon out there, she’ll have a weapon that all our other waterbenders didn’t have. She’ll have a choice.’

She stumbled away and tried to forgot the sly curl of Hama’s mouth and the way, for just a second, she saw peace nestle inside the other woman’s eyes.

 

\--------------------------

 

Katara was breathing heavily outside. There were a lot of things Kanna could say, like ‘is there a way to bring my friend home?’ Or ‘I’m sorry she violated you, and at the same time turned you into the most powerful waterbender our tribe will probably ever have.’

Instead she slid a hand over the rising heave of her granddaughter’s back.

‘It’s time to go home, my little waterbender.’

 

\--------------------------

 

That year, she did not drop a bone into the water, did not jab a needle into its frame over and over, to spill the shape of a comb against the peel of its calcium. No, she simply sat and stared out at the water a long time. Remembered a woman, who would have done everything she could to slaughter Yon Rha before he laid a hand against Kya, had things been different. Had she actually come home.

With a jolt Kanna realised that just as she had carved a place for herself out here in the South, instead of the North, perhaps Hama had done the same in the Fire Nation. It was an uncomfortable thought.

And one that she would have to learn to walk beside, furs and all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I actually paused the 'Puppetmaster' episode to count the spokes on Hama's comb. It was fourteen on the frame I stopped on, I swear. I don't know if anyone else counted different.


End file.
